Lady Good-for-Nothing eBook

“Here is Milord Vyell,” said the Penitent,
picking up a broken lath and pointing with it.

He lay on his back, as he had lain for close upon
three hours, deep in the shadow of the overhanging
house. His eyes were wide open. They stared
up at the cobwebs that dangled from the broken plaster.
A pillar, in weight maybe half a ton, rested across
his thighs; an oaken beam across his chest and his
broken left arm. The two pinned him hopelessly.

Clutched to him in his right lay Donna Maria.
She seemed to sleep, with her head turned from his
breast and laid upon the upper arm. The weight
of the pillar resting on her bowels had squeezed the
life out of her. She was dead: her flesh
by this time almost cold.

“Oliver!—­Ah, look at me!—­I
am here—­I have come to help!”

The lids twitched slightly over his wide eyes.
In the dim light she could almost be sworn that the
lips, too, moved as though to speak. But no words
came, and the eyes did not see her.

He was alive. What else mattered?

She knelt and flung her arms about the pillar.
Frantically, vainly, she tugged at it: not by
an inch or the tenth part of an inch could she stir
it.

“Speak to me, Oliver! . . . Look at least!”

“If your Excellency will but have patience!”
The Penitent stepped out into the street and she
heard him blowing a whistle. Clearly he was
a man to be obeyed; for in less than ten minutes a
dozen figures crowded about the entrance, shutting
out the day. This darkness of their making was
in truth their best commendation. For against
any one of them coming singly Ruth had undoubtedly
held her dagger ready. They grumbled, too, and
some even cursed the Penitent for having dragged them
away from their loot. The Penitent called them
cheerfully his little sons of the devil, and adjured
them to fall to work or it would be the worse for
them.

For his part, he lifted no hand: but stood overseer
as the ruffians lifted the pillar, Ruth straining
her strength with theirs.

But when they came to lift Donna Maria, for a moment
something hitched, and Ruth heard the sound of rending
cloth. The poor wretch in her death-agony had
bitten through Sir Oliver’s arm to the bone.
The corpse yet clenched its jaws on the bite.
They had to wrench the teeth open—­delicate
pretty teeth made for nibbling sweetmeats.

To his last day Oliver Vyell bore the mark of those
pretty teeth, and took it to the grave with him.

Ruth drew out a purse. But the Penitent, though
they grumbled, would suffer his scoundrels to take
no fee. Nay, he commanded two, and from somewhere
out of devastated Lisbon they fetched a sedan-chair
for the broken man. “You may pay these
if you will,” said he. “Honestly,
they deserve it.”

On her way westward, following the chair, she called
to them to stop and search whereabouts Mr. Langton
had fallen. They found him with the small greyhound
standing guard beside the body. His head was
pillowed on his arm, and he lay as one quietly sleeping.